Previously overlooked documents in the Vatican Archives reveal for the first time in detail how Luther was perceived from Rome. Volker Reinhardt demonstrates in his groundbreaking book how this leads to a completely new understanding of the Reformation, whose deeper, lasting causes lie in the hatred and misunderstanding between "cultured Italians" and "barbaric Germans." Luther harbored a burning hatred for "the devil's pig, the Pope." The Roman theologians, in turn, could not comprehend what the coarse, infinitely vain monk wanted other than to destroy the papacy. And pious princes in Germany had their own reasons for supporting the fiery preacher of hatred. Thus, the path to the schism was early on predetermined—completely independent of the theological disputes that hardly anyone understood even then. Volker Reinhardt illustrates this based on b.